Tehillim (Reich)
Encyclopedia
Tehillim is a piece of music
by American composer Steve Reich
, written in 1981.
The title comes from the Hebrew
word for "psalms", and the work is the first to reflect Reich's Jewish heritage. It is in four parts, marked fast, fast, slow and fast.
Tehillim is the setting of Psalms 19:2-5 (19:1-4 in Christian translations), 34:13-15 (34:12-14), 18:26-27 (18:25-26) and finally 150:4-6.
The four parts of the work are based on these four texts respectively.
In its standard chamber version Tehillim is scored for four women's voices (one high soprano
, two lyric soprano
s and one alto), piccolo
, flute
, oboe
, English horn, two clarinet
s, six percussion (playing small tuned tambourine
s without jingles, clapping, maracas, marimba
, vibraphone
and crotales
), two electric organ
s, two violin
s, viola
, cello
and bass
. The voices, wind
s and string
s are amplified
in performance.
Tehillim may strike listeners familiar with much of Reich's other work as something of a departure from his earlier pieces. In contrast to his entire oeuvre, with the possible exceptions of The Cave (1993) and Proverb
(1995), Tehillim is less "radical" musically.
This difference is, on the one hand, thematic. It was the first major composition by Reich to reference explicitly his new-found interest in his Jewish heritage, and his Judaism as such. However, although this is obviously central to the work, and although Reich has never subsequently (until his 2004 You Are (Variations)) set the Jewish scriptures to music, the real difference lies in the formal aspects of Tehillim.
Typically, Reich's music is characterised by a steady pulse
and the repetition of a comparatively small amount of melodic
material emanating from a clear tonal centre
(a style of writing which is called 'minimalist
'). Both aspects are certainly to be identified in Tehillim (the composition in no way marks a complete aesthetic break for Reich), for example in the quick, unchanging tempo
of the first two parts, which are played one after another without a break, and the close four-part canon
s of the first and fourth parts. However, these aspects together constitute only the broad outlines of the work; how they are presented is markedly different from his early work.
These differences are a direct consequence of the need felt by the composer to, "set the text in accordance with its rhythm and meaning".
There is no fixed metre
or metric pattern in Tehillim. The rhythm of the music comes directly from the rhythm of the Hebrew text.
Secondly, the musical setting of lengthy 3-4 line texts results in the composition of extended melodies at that point atypical for Reich. "Though an entire melody may be repeated either as the subject of a canon or variation, this is actually closer to what one finds throughout the history of Western music". As such, this second aspect of extended melody contributes to the appearance of structures not without precedent in Western musical history.
"The use of extended melodies, imitative counterpoint
, functional harmony
and full orchestration
may well suggest renewed interest in Classical, or more accurately Baroque
, and earlier Western musical practice. The non-vibrato
, non-opera
tic vocal production will also remind listeners a singing style derived from outside the tradition of 'Western Art Music'. However, the overall sound of Tehillim, and in particular, the intricately interlocking percussion writing which, together with the text, marks this music as unique by introducing a basic musical element that one does not find in earlier Western musical practice including the music of this century. Tehillim may thus be heard as traditional and new at the same time".
None of the writing is informed by the sound or structure (in spite of the composer's recent study of Hebrew cantillation
) of Jewish music generally or any existing tradition for singing the Biblical text. Indeed, a major factor in Reich's choosing the Psalms was that, "the oral tradition for Psalm singing in the Western synagogues has been lost. This meant I was free to compose the melodies for Tehillim without a living oral tradition to imitate or ignore."
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
by American composer Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
, written in 1981.
The title comes from the Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
word for "psalms", and the work is the first to reflect Reich's Jewish heritage. It is in four parts, marked fast, fast, slow and fast.
Tehillim is the setting of Psalms 19:2-5 (19:1-4 in Christian translations), 34:13-15 (34:12-14), 18:26-27 (18:25-26) and finally 150:4-6.
The four parts of the work are based on these four texts respectively.
In its standard chamber version Tehillim is scored for four women's voices (one high soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
, two lyric soprano
Lyric soprano
A lyric soprano is a type of operatic soprano that has a warm quality with a bright, full timbre which can be heard over an orchestra. The lyric soprano voice generally has a higher tessitura than a soubrette and usually plays ingenues and other sympathetic characters in opera. Lyric sopranos have...
s and one alto), piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
, English horn, two clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s, six percussion (playing small tuned tambourine
Tambourine
The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....
s without jingles, clapping, maracas, marimba
Marimba
The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...
, vibraphone
Vibraphone
The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....
and crotales
Crotales
thumb|right|Crotales are often used with other mallet percussionCrotales , sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about 4 inches in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly...
), two electric organ
Electronic organ
An electronic organ is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally, it was designed to imitate the sound of pipe organs, theatre organs, band sounds, or orchestral sounds....
s, two violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
s, viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
, cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
and bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
. The voices, wind
Wind instrument
A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator , in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into a mouthpiece set at the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of...
s and string
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
s are amplified
Amplifier
Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is a device for increasing the power of a signal.In popular use, the term usually describes an electronic amplifier, in which the input "signal" is usually a voltage or a current. In audio applications, amplifiers drive the loudspeakers used in PA systems to...
in performance.
Tehillim may strike listeners familiar with much of Reich's other work as something of a departure from his earlier pieces. In contrast to his entire oeuvre, with the possible exceptions of The Cave (1993) and Proverb
Proverb (Reich)
Proverb is a musical composition by Steve Reich for three sopranos, two tenors, two vibraphones, and two electric organs. It sets a text by Ludwig Wittgenstein. It was written in 1995 and was originally intended for The Proms and the Utrecht Early Music Festival...
(1995), Tehillim is less "radical" musically.
This difference is, on the one hand, thematic. It was the first major composition by Reich to reference explicitly his new-found interest in his Jewish heritage, and his Judaism as such. However, although this is obviously central to the work, and although Reich has never subsequently (until his 2004 You Are (Variations)) set the Jewish scriptures to music, the real difference lies in the formal aspects of Tehillim.
Typically, Reich's music is characterised by a steady pulse
Pulse (music)
In music and music theory, the pulse or tactus consists of beats in a series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time occurring at the mensural level...
and the repetition of a comparatively small amount of melodic
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
material emanating from a clear tonal centre
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
(a style of writing which is called 'minimalist
Minimalist music
Minimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....
'). Both aspects are certainly to be identified in Tehillim (the composition in no way marks a complete aesthetic break for Reich), for example in the quick, unchanging tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
of the first two parts, which are played one after another without a break, and the close four-part canon
Canon (music)
In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration . The initial melody is called the leader , while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower...
s of the first and fourth parts. However, these aspects together constitute only the broad outlines of the work; how they are presented is markedly different from his early work.
These differences are a direct consequence of the need felt by the composer to, "set the text in accordance with its rhythm and meaning".
There is no fixed metre
Metre (music)
Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...
or metric pattern in Tehillim. The rhythm of the music comes directly from the rhythm of the Hebrew text.
Secondly, the musical setting of lengthy 3-4 line texts results in the composition of extended melodies at that point atypical for Reich. "Though an entire melody may be repeated either as the subject of a canon or variation, this is actually closer to what one finds throughout the history of Western music". As such, this second aspect of extended melody contributes to the appearance of structures not without precedent in Western musical history.
"The use of extended melodies, imitative counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
, functional harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and full orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
may well suggest renewed interest in Classical, or more accurately Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
, and earlier Western musical practice. The non-vibrato
Vibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
, non-opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic vocal production will also remind listeners a singing style derived from outside the tradition of 'Western Art Music'. However, the overall sound of Tehillim, and in particular, the intricately interlocking percussion writing which, together with the text, marks this music as unique by introducing a basic musical element that one does not find in earlier Western musical practice including the music of this century. Tehillim may thus be heard as traditional and new at the same time".
None of the writing is informed by the sound or structure (in spite of the composer's recent study of Hebrew cantillation
Cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible to complement the letters and vowel points...
) of Jewish music generally or any existing tradition for singing the Biblical text. Indeed, a major factor in Reich's choosing the Psalms was that, "the oral tradition for Psalm singing in the Western synagogues has been lost. This meant I was free to compose the melodies for Tehillim without a living oral tradition to imitate or ignore."